The original focus of this blog was going to be about getting older and coming to terms with things like responsibility and “real” life. I’ve pretty much given up on a motif but I felt like a return to my original mission was overdue. So here goes…
They say you are only as old as you feel. I feel like I’m thirteen, a thirteen year-old with the beginnings of a beer belly, a mortgage, and a hairline that’s fighting a losing battle with his forehead. Aging is a strange experience. I guess I shouldn’t say that because it is a universal ordeal. Still, actually going through it feels unnatural.
Some people are born as adults. They seem to transition into their responsibilities and adult roles without effort or contradictory impulses. However, it seems like a lot of people in my generation (myself included) are very much in a round peg, square hole situation. I’m not talking about irresponsibility or foolishness, that’s too simple a view of the phenomenon. I know plenty of people who are very capable and responsible contributors to society who are very much children masquerading as high powered adults. I can only describe it as a disjoint between my conception of what I thought being an adult meant and the reality of my existence as one. There’s a gap there. As a child I assumed my parents knew how to do everything. My understanding was that there were knowledge and skills that were somehow inherent in all adults. Like a built in time-bomb of maturity that would go off when you reached a certain age… kind of like pubes. You just wake up on day and there they are… profound evidence of getting older. Naturally, I just accepted that when I “grew up” I would acquire adulthood in a similar fashion, roll out of bed one morning to find that I hate loud music and have an overwhelming desire to tuck my shirt in really tight.
Instead, I wake up to the same person I was yesterday, albeit a little balder and slower. I find that rather than my own maturity level rising it seems like my opinion of the general adult population gets lower. It’s not that I get more mature. It’s that I realize that other people are just as juvenile as me. Adulthood is not a transformation into a competent and responsible human being, it’s the slowly dawning realization that nobody else knows what the hell they are doing either.
2 comments:
"Adulthood is not a transformation into a competent and responsible human being, it’s the slowly dawning realization that nobody else knows what the hell they are doing either."
Nail on the head. I couldn't agree with you more. Great post.
Good work, Mike!
The Peter Pan-demic
Growing up is hard to do. The good, and bad, in remaining young at heart.
By:Matthew Hutson
There is a saying (Zen? Stoner?) that a true master is always in a state of play, handling ideas like Silly Putty. Bruce Charlton, a professor of evolutionary psychiatry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in England, might argue that today we are surrounded by masters. Or children.
In an editorial in the journal Medical Hypotheses, he coined the term "psychological neoteny." Neoteny means retaining the qualities of youth into adulthood. According to Charlton, trends in modern society encourage us to remain cognitively flexible—in a sense unfinished. Protean personalities thrive in an era of increased higher education, frequent changes in workplace demands, and the need to move and make new friends. He says the eternally wonky whiz kids in science and academia—on the forefront of a changing knowledge landscape—exemplify the trait.
"In a traditional society, Farmer Giles never visits the next village, but he knows everything there is to know about corn and is a source of sage advice," Charlton says. Which hints at the downside of knowing a little corn, a little calculus, and a little Coldplay. "Modern people also retain the undesirable aspects of immaturity—instability, fickleness, and shallowness."
Charlton's only hard data, however, are numbers showing more degrees and delays in settling down, a correlation open to interpretation. "One emphasis of liberal education is to provide students with the tools to engage in lifelong learning," says Sylvia Hurtado, director of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. "It is the best way to hedge our bets against a changing economy." But, Hurtado adds, "our national surveys do not have a measure for immaturity."
Charlton urges that for now his idea is mostly speculation meant to spur future research. In the meantime, remain young at heart. You know that famous pic of Einstein sticking his tongue out? You're in good company.
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